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MaRess – Task 4: Resources Policy in the Area of Enterprise-Related Instruments – Executive Summary
Organisation: The first step would be to oblige listed companies to publish an annual
audited environment and sustainability report in accordance with GRI guidelines and to
participate fully in the Carbon Disclosure Project. The disclosure of resource aspects
could be added at a later date, with reference to the resource-related key performance
indicators developed (5). Along with the Federal Environment Ministry and the Federal
Environment Agency, the momentum for this should be generated in particular by the
stock exchange supervisory authorities in Germany’s federal states.
2.3.11 Innovation Agents: Know-How and Capital for Business Enterprises (14)
Idea: The new concept of innovation agents links innovation coaches (advisers on innovation
management in business enterprises) with business angels who bring private
capital, know-how and external contacts into companies. This will generate new synergies
for increasing resource efficiency, especially at the early stages of innovation.
Organisation: To counter their lack of in-house knowledge and know-how, companies
need actors who lend specialist professional support to their corporate product and
service innovation processes, from invention to market launch. Along with government
grants, innovation projects are financed largely by private share capital. The new aspect
here is the interaction between in-house innovation advice (innovation coaches)
and private share capital (business angels). The deployment of specially trained innovation
coaches would professionalise innovation management in companies and spur
on product, structure and process innovations in SMEs. Business angels, in contrast,
bring private capital, commercial know-how and external contacts into companies. The
networking of these two actors, who have functioned separately hitherto, could activate
and generate considerable synergy potential. The basis for the work of the innovation
coaches will be a promotional programme set up to supplement existing promotional
programmes in individual federal states (3).
2.3.12 Innovation Laboratories: Improve Resource Competence and Capacity
for Innovation (15)
Idea: Innovation laboratories would provide a temporally and organisationally flexible
co-operation opportunity for a cross-company innovation process in complex or largescale
research projects in the field of resource efficiency. Innovation laboratories would
not only be a form of cooperation between companies and various company-related
actors, but would offer the necessary equipment, know-how and human resources for
complex innovation projects. This would enable SMEs to address their innovation
needs directly and to overcome size-related disadvantages in relation to other business
enterprises.
Organisation: Depending on their detailed conception, innovation laboratories could
address the following sub-goals: